Marc Almond
Enchanted

THE REVIEW

It's difficult to find a more fitting title and cover for an album like this, and after all, Mr. Marc Almond is someone who truly understands enchantment: after the immensely successful Soft Cell interlude, probably the most substantial duo of the '80s synth-pop scene, he embarked on a solo career that was prolific and filled with countless gems. At a respectable distance from the spotlight, in that "niche" dimension where one is freer to express their flair without limitations, Marc Almond has established himself as a true, complete Artist, perhaps unique in his kind: a remarkable writing ability that translates into visionary, poignant, and sincere poetry of universal breadth beyond appearances, expressed by a wonderful voice, the voice of an entertainer, a brilliant theater performer also capable of touching the most sensitive strings of the listener's heart and mind, in a representation as scenically perfect as it is true and heartfelt.

 With "Enchanted" from 1990, Marc Almond musically distances himself from his native England: this is an album of absolutely Mediterranean taste, warm, an ideal backdrop for a clear summer night, perhaps contemplating the starry sky. The atmospheres range from Spanish, Gypsy sounds to Middle Eastern suggestions, the synth component is reduced to the bone, giving free rein to more popular and natural sounds: it is a stylistically very ambitious album, involving countless musicians, including a whole string orchestra, and despite the contrasts between Almond and producer Bob Kraushaar, the final result is a work of art of rare beauty, a balm for the ears and the spirit. In "Enchanted," this artist's poetry is more vivid and intense than ever, "Madame De La Luna", an eclectic, multiform, and spectacular declaration of love for that satellite that has inspired artists and dreamers since the dawn of time, is a clear demonstration of this, as is "Toreador In The Rain", a wonderful Andalusian serenade where lightness and epicity, passion and beauty, splendor and misery, life and death intertwine, all in less than three minutes. The strings of "The Sea Still Sings" are one of the most dramatic highlights of the album, weaving a poignant elegy enriched with female choirs and performed with dark and suffering pathos, an elegy dedicated to the sea and inspired by the ecological disaster of the Exxon Valdez, a suffering also found in the majestic closure of "Orpheus In Red Velvet", a journey of great orchestral spleen into the inferno of an intense passion to the point of paroxysm.

 "Deaths Diary" is a sonnet that completely and dramatically overturns the myth of creation in seven stanzas of pain and disenchantment, masked under the suave appearance of a passionate Slavic dance, Gypsy-like, a dissimulation also present in the tango of "A Lover Spurned", as warm and sensual in music as it is ruthless in lyrics, while in the singles "The Desperate Hours" and "Waifs And Strays" a more pronounced synth matrix dominates compared to the rest of "Enchanted," drawing melodies of intense and poignant beauty on which Almond expresses sentimental poetry halfway between sensuality and melancholy, a love veiled by the shadow of death in the Arabesque "Widow Weeds", Middle Eastern sounds that, on the contrary, are tinged with a thousand colors in "Carnival Of Life", a true anthem to life, to pleasure and the passion of the senses, in which Clare Torry's presence in the choirs stands out.

 Faced with an album of such magnitude, one can speak without hesitation of a masterpiece, it's difficult to find such great harmony between music and words, refinement and eclecticism expressed with such style and inspiration: in "Enchanted" everything borders on perfection, a work that combines exquisite compositional skills with the ability to excite and make one reflect; all sung by Marc Almond's mesmerizing and captivating voice, it's impossible to deny such a record the highest of marks, an album that reconciles with the sense of Beauty in the most poetic sense of the term.